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Chimiiey Corner 
Graduates 



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B y 

JAME,S LANE, ALLEN 

Author of The Kentucky Cardinal^ Aftermath^ Summer 

in Arcady, The Choir Invisible, The 

Reign of Law, etc. 





COMPLIMENTS OF 
THE, HOME, CORRESPONDENCE. 
SCHOOL 

SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS 

L ____>_ 



'h:^ 



THE f^6«ARY OF 
Tv<o Cut»l6B Keceivec 

m. 31 1902 

CLASS CL ^^^1 ^' 



JEntered according' to Act of Congress, in the year 

IQOO, hy The King Richardson Company, 

in the Office of the Librarian of 

Congress, at Washington. 




I 



jUNDREDS of young men 
in this country, because 
they cannot go to college, 
give up the thought of 
ever becoming educated, relinquish 
the happiness, honors, and useful- 
ness which education can alone 
bring, and enter upon early man- 
hood as self-accepted failures. 

I should like to link my arm 
within that of each of these young 
men and walk out with him some 
night when the heavens are clear. 
Then for every star that he could 
point out to me, beginning with 
the brightest, I would undertake 
to point out for him some shining 
name among the living or the dead, 
who, without college or teacher, 
transformed his inner darkness into 
light, his ignorance into knowledge, 
and is now set, either as a greater 
or as a lesser light, in the firmament 
of the world's benefactors. The 
dawn would break and we should 
still be talking ; and for nights 



4 CHIMNEY CORNER GRADUATES 

to come there would be no end 
for the names, as there would be 
no number for the stars. 

Not lack of schools and teach- 
ers, nor want of books and friends ; 
not the most despised rank or call- 
ing; not poverty nor ill health nor 
deafness nor blindness; not hunger, 
cold, weariness, care, nor sickness 
of heart, have been able to keep 
men and women in this life from 
self-education. 

What is it that you want to 
learn and cannot? 

Is it writing? Remember Mur- 
ray, the linguist, who made a pen 
for himself out of a stem of heather, 
sharpening it in the fire, and for a 
copy book used a worn-out wool 
card. 

Is it English grammar ? Re- 
member Cobbett, who learned it 
while he was making sixpence a 
day, often with no light but winter 
fire light, and often crowded away 
from this and reduced almost to 
starvation if he spent a penny for 
pens or paper. 

Have you no money to buy 



B y JAMES LANE ALLEN 5 

books ? Remember More, who 
borrowed Newton's Principia and 
copied it for himself. 

Is it the multiplication table 
you wish to learn ? Remember 
Biddle, the poorest of boys, after- 
ward known throughout the world, 
who learned it up to a million by 
means of peas, marbles, and a bag 
of shot. 

Is it music ? Remember Watt, 
the inventor of the steam engine, 
who, with no ear for music, mas- 
tered harmonies for himself because 
he had determined to build an 
organ. 

Is it Latin? Remember the 
son of a poor jeweler, afterward Sir 
Samuel Romilly, who learned it 
untaught. 

Is it Greek or Hebrew? Re- 
member the dull carpenter appren- 
tice, Lee, afterwards master of 
many tongues and professor at 
Cambridge, who began by buying 
a Latin grammar, sold his Latin 
books and bought Greek ones, sold 
his Greek books to buy Hebrew 
ones, always teaching himself. 



6 CHIMNEY CORNER GRADUATES 

Is it geology? Remember 
Hugh Miller, who learned in a 
stone quarry. 

There is little taught in the 
schools that men have not tauorht 
themselves amid difficulties and 
despite obstacles greater, perhaps, 
than you have ever known. 





II 



jRE you hindered and dis- 
heartened by your position 
in life and the sort of trade 
you follow ? 

Weil, what then, in heaven's 
name are you ? A barber ? So 
was Arkwright, founder of the cot- 
ton manufacture of England, who 
began by shaving people in a cellar 
at a penny a shave. 

Are you a coal miner ? So was 
Bewick, founder of wood engrav- 
ing. 

Are you the son of a poor 
farmer? So was Sir Isaac Newton, 
the sun itself in the heaven of 
science. 

A bricklayer ? So was Ben 
Johnson, one of the most illustrious 
names in English literature. 

A tailor? So was brave Hob- 
son, admiral of the navy. 

A butcher? So was Wolsey, 
the most illustrious cardinal of 
England. 



8 CHIMNEY CORNER GRADUATES 

The fireman of an engine ? So 
was Stephenson, inventor of the 
locomotive. 

A shoemaker? So was Ed- 
wards, the profound naturaHst. 

A bookbinder ? So was Fara- 
day, afterwards lecturer on chem- 
istry before the Royal Institution. 

From every human craft men 
have started out in quest of knowl- 
edge and found wisdom. 





Ill 

jOU say. Ah ! These were 
extraordinary men ; 1 am 
ordinary and cannot do 
what they did. Certainly 
not. You miss the lesson : do 
what you can with your powers and 
opportunities as faithfully as they 
did what they could with theirs. 
Then perhaps you will find your- 
self no longer ordinary. 

For what made these men ex- 
traordinary ? Genius ? Don't you 
believe it. 

If you could collect them into 
one august company and bid each 
rise and state the secret of his suc- 
cess, perhaps not one would say, 
my genius. 

One would say, my patience; 
another, hard work; another, en- 
ergy ; another, perseverance ; an- 
other, memory ; another, common 
sense; another, self-reliance; an- 
other, the habit of attention; an- 
other, not wasting time; another, 
the capacity to take infinite pains. 



lo CHIMNEY CORNER GRADUATES 

All the answers would be the 
simplest; and these are the old, 
old answers that have been given 
since the world was made and must 
be given while the world shall 
stand. 

Nor can anything new be said 
to you that has not been repeated to 
every generation seeking knowl- 
edge this side of the youthful 
priests of Egypt and the calm 
scholars of Greece, except this one 
thing, that self-education is more 
practicable in the United States at 
the present time than in any land 
in the past. 

There are four reasons for this : 
books are cheaper than ever before; 
text-books are now made simple 
and easy to meet the wants of stu- 
dents at home ; much of the knowl- 
edge taught in the universities is 
nov/ put within reach of the chim- 
ney-corner student in a popular 
form through correspondence in- 
struction, newspapers, weekly and 
monthly publications; and in every 
village, so widespread has education 
become, vdll be found some per- 
sons to whom the solitary, earnest 



By JAMES LANE ALLEN ii 

toiler can apply for suggestion and 
guidance. 

These advantages the self-edu- 
cated men of the past never en- 
joyed. 

What is your further necessary 
outfit? It is very simple: a few 
hours of leisure out of every twen- 
ty-four ; a little money ; and the 
determination to act as teacher to 
the powers of your own mind ; 
single-handed if need be, but un- 
der competent guidance, personal 
or otherwise, if you can secure it. 

Yes, that is the whole truth ; 
teach yourself. Tou Can ; If Ever 
Educated^ IVhether In College Or 
Notj Tou Must. For what is a 
college? A place where a set of 
men will train the powers of your 
mind for you and require vou to 
absorb knowledge. 

No. I was thrown with many 
hundreds of young men in my uni- 
versity; afterwards 1 taught hun- 
dreds of others. 

It is my firm conviction that 
the greatest number of those who 
failed did so from this mistaken 
idea of a college as a place where 



12 CHIMNEY CORNER GRADUATES 

they would be trained and be taught. 

But A College Is Mainly a 
Place Where Tou Train Yourself 
And Teach Yourself — under guid- 
ance and with certain advantages. 

In a gymnasium who carries on 
your muscular education ? You. 
You tug, you expand your chest, 
you push, pull, strike, run. 

A teacher in a college no more 
trains your mind than one in a gym- 
nasium trains your body. He 
gives out from day to day mental 
work for you to train your powers 
upon. You go off to your chim- 
ney corner and do this or not. 
Then you go back to him and he 
finds out what you have done ; 
whether you have trained memory, 
patience, self-reliance, attention, ca- 
pacity for work, and capacity to 
take pains. 

But all the teachers in the world 
cannot train these powers for you. 
They only guide, encourage, in- 
spire, as you draw these things out 
of your own nature, toiling in some 
chimney corner of solitary effort. 

But if you must train them in 
college, can you not train them 



By JAMES LANE ALLEN 13 

out of college ? Life is the answer. 

Life, the world, trains every 
power to the highest exercise and 
efficiency in persons who never saw 
a college or had a teacher, save that 
of a dominating purpose. 

Here, then, perhaps, we reach 
your greatest difficulty ; you believe 
you can attend to the training of 
your powers, but for guiding them 
in the pursuit of knowledge a 
teacher is indispensable. 

True. But now make your 
greatest discovery of the goodness 
and wisdom of nature, who realized 
that while few of the myriads of 
her human creatures could ever pay 
for a teacher, all of them needed to 
be taught, and so bestowed upon 
the human mind not only the power 
to learn but also the power to teach 
itself. 

She has made you to yourself 
both pupil and teacher, school child 
and school master. 

If you will only learn well all 
that your mind can teach you, your 
education will never lack breadth 
and depth and sublimity. 

Who taught the first astrono- 



14 CHIMNEY CORNER GRADU ATES 

mer? Who the most advanced one 
living to-day ? 

Who taught Gray American 
botany, or Audubon American or- 
nithology, or Franklin science, or 
Edison invention ? 

Who in every age and land has 
taught those who knew more of 
any subject than all others ? 

Who taught these teachers in 
colleges ? 

All have been taught by the 
teacher you possess — the teacher 
within. 

On going to college a young 
man's first astounding discovery is 
often this : that every teacher there 
sets him to teaching himself. 

The better college student you 
are, the more independent you will 
be of every other teacher than your- 
self. 

If in college you cannot teach 
yourself at all, you fail and educa- 
tion becomes impossible. 

But if you have to teach your- 
self in college, cannot you do this 
out of college ? Especially when 
modern correspondence methods 
bring all the guiding influences of 



By JAMES LANE ALLE N 15 

school and college and teacher to 
your very door? 

The builders of our govern- 
mental machinery little thought 
that the postal service was to per- 
form so beneficent a function in the 
cause of popular education. 

Teaching by Mail makes every 
home, every shop, every place 
where there are human hearts to 
aspire, a centre of education, and 
brings possibilities of the com- 
pletest development. 

It is beyond the power of mind 
to comprehend in its fullness the 
good done the country in this way. 

Do you ask verification ? Study 
the world about you ; life is the 
answer. Life, the world, is self- 
taught in a thousand cases where it 
is college-bred in one. 

Thus, whether you go to col- 
lege or not, all education is essen- 
tially self-education ; and in the 
truest, noblest sense of patient, 
energetic self-reliance every gradu- 
ate is a chimney corner graduate. 



iAN. St t902 




